Meet Me In The Air Single - Review and thoughts (contains spoilers for those wishing to abstain til release)

Well, I picked up the vinyl single (A side: Where's My Room B side: Meet Me In the Air). at the Kaiwaka concert, and have finally had a chance to absorb it after some multiple listens. So this post is really for those who want to get a feel for how the new album may sound.

Where's My Room is a left field odd sort of song. The first 2 and a half minutes sound like Liam and Connan sort of fooling around. I am pretty certain the two main vocals are Liam and Connan (but could be wrong). Liam's vocals are reminiscent of Neil's Pajama Club vocals on "Tell Me What You Want". If I hadn't seen the gig and Liam doing the vocals, I may have thought it was Neil.

It also has that lo-fi, slightly funky vibe of Pajama Club. It also sounds suspiciously like its using a drum machine.

Lyric sample is:

Where’s my room? Oh no where is my room?

Where’s my room? I hope I find it soon

Where’s my room? I need a place to stay

Where’s my room? I have to hide away

I’ve seen enough to figure it out

I’ve seen enough - there’s no way out

You’ve been waiting for me to come back

I walk on water - I cover my tracks

Where’s my room? Oh no no where is my room?

Where’s my room? Oh no where is my room?"

Yeah...

Then at 2.25, everything changes!

Neil comes in with a mighty fine piano piece (for me it invoked a bit of Pour Le Monde), and it sounds quite Crowded House Mk 2 like. The next minute and a half I think is classic Neil. There is no falsetto (which I'm not a huge fan of personally), and there are parts when he sings lower than you would expect from him.

The lyrics to Neil's part are:

The show is over

I’m part of the crowd

All the well wishers are gathering round

And even strangers look familiar to me now

Tell me if I met you once before

Say yeah

All our lives, all our lives, all our lives

We’ve been looking for love

Now it’s looking for us

Singing

All our lives, all our lives, we’re wrapped up

It’s been looking for us all along (sung low)

All our lives, all our lives, all our lives

We’ve been looking for love

Now it’s looking for us

Sing it

All our lives, all our lives, we’re wrapped up

It’s been looking for us all along (sung low)

This is a completely different song but somehow they make it link to the first part in a way that actually kind of works. The drums sound real and the over sound is fuller. There seems to be a trombone or something similar in the background. I think it is 90 seconds of sublime Neil.

Then it all changes again - there appears to be a cello riff accompanying the funky guitar and we are back to Connan and Liam, doing a sort of repeat of the first part with Connan's vocal more prominent that Liam. The cello riff slowly starts to become more prominent. The cello sees the song out.

The song keeps growing on me with every listen.

I will cover off Meet Me In The Air when I get a chance a bit later...

Meet Me In The Air sounds completely different to Where’s My Room. It continues to grow on me with each listen.

I wasn’t overly taken with it at the concert but probably more so because it seemed a slightly strange choice as the opener - I was hoping to something with a bit more kick to get things started.

The recorded version works well. It is a slow, dreamy, hypnotic song. I could see it easily fitting into the Rain soundtrack. It has that sort of vibe. It’s the sort of song that you could imagine relaxing and falling asleep to.

Neil and Liam share vocals with both using their falsettos quite regularly.

Its not a great song for being able to pick up the lyrics easily. As the song goes on, Neil’s counter lines will often start prior to Liam finishing his line. Something about the song reminds me of Learning To Crawl (From 7 Worlds Collide 2). I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it may just be the way Neil and Liam shared the vocals and how their voices work together.

I did try to get the first part of the lyrics down but with not too much luck (I can’t be sure that even the words I have got down are the right ones), and then I just gave up:

Violent Lightening We’ll be leaping in the air(Find out for yourself)..?. show meAll this talking in his head(Something like)..... ......??Through the aching in the ?(.... ....??)Sunlight gathers? Come and meet me in the air(...? Follows you)

We’ll be right there when you wake..?... tea and a cake?

When we welcome you onboardIt takes so long to get yourIt takes so long to get your reward

Based on these two songs, Im really looking forward to the album. My gut feel is that the songs will be quite eclectic so there should be something in it for everybody, even if it’s not quite the album they were hoping it would be.

The production seems about right to me. My guess is that Neil and Liam have produced it themselves. I particularly like what I think are cellos in Wheres My Room.

Now I just really want to attend another concert to hear the other songs again. If anybody knows of a spare ticket for sale for the Paekakariki or Himitangi concerts next week, please let me know!

Again, many thanks, Whysus. I'm a little surprised not to find these on iTunes if they are selling them as a single. Maybe soon. Very hopeful about this album. Even if it is a bit different, I'm expecting to like it a lot.

Not on Spotify either, though I did find a Liam song I hadn't heard. It is a cover of an previously unknown Arthur Russell ( whom I am unfamiliar with) song called "This Love is Crying". Very lovely, and sounds like something Liam could have written.

Thanks for all the info!!! Can't wait to hear the new songs. Surprised none of the live performance clips have popped up on YouTube.

No worries. I'm a bit surprised at the lack of web presence of info and discussion (for both the tour and the single), so wanted to do my bit to fill the void.

I find this one of the most fascinating tours Neil has done. The setlist is made up of mainly new songs that most people would have never heard, played in small halls, in even smaller towns. I ended up travelling to a town I never even knew existed!

The tour has brilliant merchandising. You can buy a cool screen printed signed tour poster (framed or unframed), tour T-shirt, Vinyl, and a very cool tea towel (retro design with a map of NZ - showing a picture of each venue at the location on the map). It is being filmed, so I am hoping there will be some kind of documentary of the tour.

I am just kicking myself I couldn't manage to get to more than one gig.

I think there may be some formal gig reviews after tonight's show at Pukekohe (given it is the closest one to Auckland). There will also likely be a review after the Paekakariki one too (given its closest to Wellington).

I'm really excited about the album - it has been a long time in the making. I believe it was started on 14 March 2016 (when Neil tweeted that the band and the producer arrived and recording was to begin), and we know so little about it, and there are so many unanswered questions.

I do know that Mick Fleetwood was recording with Neil and Liam in March 2016 (because he spoke about it at his gigs), but I have no idea if any of those recordings actually make this album that is going to be released, and what the relationship is between the session and the album. That recording session and the Neil & Liam album is still very much a mystery to me. I have a much better feel after attending the gig and listening to the single, but who knows how representative the single will be of the album? Indeed, Neil's contribution to the song Wheres My Room, is completely non-representative of the rest of the song! ... and I find that kind of cool.

We really don't know much about the songs' origins, recording etc... It is almost the opposite of Out of Silence where we were in the room for its recording, and it came out instantly. Looking at the tweet again in March 2016, Neil mentioned that the producer was also in town, so he did hire a producer for it. But could this be like the Visconti Finn Bros album where Neil didn't like the results, so redid it (but perhaps with bits and pieces of the original recordings still making it)?

I'm just keen to share any bits of info I can based on the show and the single in case they provide some clues to the unanswered questions.

There is absolutely no information about the recordings on the vinyl single, - it refers to neilandliamfinn.com for liner notes, but that site only has concert details.

One of the things I admire about Neil is he doesn't follow a formula, and likes to collaborate. He is willing to push the boundaries a bit and try new things. We have seen it with Finn, Try Whistling This, Rain, Pajama Club, and Out of Silence. I doubt people would confuse these albums with a Crowded House one.

We still don't even know when the album will actually come out. Neil said "soon" at the gig, but that could still be months away. No release date has come out yet.

It isn't even clear how tightly coupled the Where's My Room tour and the album are. Will the album have completely different cover art to the tour art?

I have always enjoyed the speculation of what a new Neil album will hold and the discussions surrounding it. There just doesn't seem to be much discussion about this one, but I think it is because there is so little info to discuss. Hopefully there will be a few more NZ Frenz, attending concerts who can advise if Neil or Liam give some more clues as to what we can expect from the album, and to give their reviews of the gigs and new songs.

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